Tim Leach - A Winter War

The water was alive with horses; the other side of the river swarmed with shadows of others pressing forward, but Kai’s riders held the bank – he had five beats of the heart, perhaps, before those panicking men realised how few faced them.

‘With me! With me!’ he called, pulling his sword and rapping it against his armour, as they formed a ragged line at the edge of the water, formed as though for another charge, and he could see. The whistle of arrows then, but shot blind and fast, rattling from the trees, none falling amongst his riders.

‘Back now!’

Back through the labyrinth of the trees, his head wrenched as a branch struck him, his weight tipping back and hands grasping at the air. But his horse felt it, slowed for a moment, and Kai found his balance again.

On the ground, he could see a rider who had fallen – Goar, pushing the writhing horse off himself, reaching up a hand like a drowning man. And behind, he could hear the sound of cavalry crossing the river, so many that it was as though the river had come alive behind them.

And so Kai put his heels to his horse, the cry of the fallen rider sounding in his ears as he moved through the trees, his horse gasping and sweating beneath him, cutting to the north and the west, the blood pounding in his ears, until at last the horse could go no further and he knew that it must rest or die.

Kai swung down from the saddle to ease the weight, cradled the horse’s head against his own and whispered the words of gratitude that every rider owes his mount. He breathed and breathed until his lungs were cool and the roar in his ears fell silent.

He listened to the sounds, and heard nothing at all. He looked about the woods, and no shadows moved. He was alone.

At the edge of the woods, a single rider waited beside her horse. The horse was still and calm, for when he found himself out of battle unbloodied, the fury and fear passed as quickly as water flowing from a shattered cup. The rider moved her hands restlessly over the horse, circling the neck and the mane, and every so often she looked towards the weapon that lay on the ground beside her. For the tip of the spear shone when the light of the moon fell upon it, bright and undimmed by blood.

They were deep into the night now, the memory of the battle fading already, quick and sharp as a nightmare receding. Still the quickened heart, the stink of fear sweat upon the skin. Once more that maddening fear of waiting – not the fear of lying in an ambush, but of waiting for friends who would not come.

Once she made as if to rise back into the saddle, to set her path to the west to find the warband, or perhaps to go back into the woods in search of the others, for even that seemed better than to stay alone in that place any longer. But her trembling hands went still on the saddle, and she returned to her waiting.

In time, there was sound from the forest. The soft parting of leaves, the turn of mulch beneath a hoof. A shadow breaking from the tree line.

She was in the saddle in a moment – the spear forgotten on the ground in her haste, but too late now to pick it up. Her horse called its greeting, but that held no meaning now, not after what had happened at the ford. She waited until she heard a voice call out.

‘Though our lives be short…’

Tamura shivered with relief, and finished the old proverb: ‘…let our fame be great.’

‘A good thing we both remember our stories,’ Kai said, as he rode next to her. ‘I am glad you made it away safe. The others?’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘No sign of them yet.’

He dismounted, pulled a glove from his hand and ran it across the body of his horse, feeling for the hot blood of a wound. For the horses often bore their wounds more bravely than men, giving no sign of complaint and going to death silently. He found grazes here and there, places where the hair had been rubbed down to stubble by the scraping of armour against the skin, but no more than that.

‘I did not charge with you,’ Tamura said.

Kai lifted his head and looked towards her, but found her staring at the ground, wide-eyed, and she would not meet his gaze.

‘I am sorry,’ she continued. ‘I wanted to. But was afraid.’

‘You ran?’

‘No. But I did not follow you, not until we held the bank.’

‘Did any of the others see?’

‘I do not think so.’

‘Do not let it happen again.’

He heard a soft intake of breath, the choke of tears. ‘I thought that perhaps you might…’

‘What did you think?’ Kai said, sharper than he had meant to. He waited for a moment, to see if his voice would bring death riding from the tree line. But there was nothing but the dark and the wind.

‘The horse called out,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’

Another question, hanging heavy in the air. A truth that was not quite ready to be spoken. Perhaps it might have been, if they had been given a moment longer. But another shadow came from the woods – Saratos, trotting up to them with a smile upon his face.

‘A good night for a ride. A lover’s moon they call this, and here I find you both.’

‘Yet always you seem to ride alone,’ Tamura shot back.

‘Quiet, both of you!’ Kai said.’ Or would you bring the others down on us?’

‘No, captain. Forgive me,’ Saratos said. They were close enough now that Kai could see the white skin marked with black across the cheek, dried blood from some near miss. The trembling across the skin that Saratos had tried to still with his jest. They clasped their hands together, and they waited.

As the moon turned through the sky, they stayed in place hoping for others to emerge from the woods. Slowly, achingly slowly, as if entire nights passed between every beating of the heart.

They waited together, silent, for as long as they could.

‘Well,’ said Kai at last, ‘that is it.’

Again, the hand looping in the air to draw them close, and again they formed their circle, clasped their arms around each other.

‘I saw Goar on the ground,’ said Kai. He remembered once more the sight of that man’s face, hands reaching up like one swept into the white water of a river – a man so close to safety, who already knows that he is dead. ‘Did either of you see others fall for certain?’

‘I think that I saw Erakas die,’ said Saratos. ‘Speared from his horse. I killed the man that did it, but he was in the water then. I saw no more than that.’

A hard touch in the heart, to know Erakas dead, for he had been the first beside Kai on the riverbank. A memory swam up from the winter – laughter around a fire, the wine running freely, Erakas’s arm about his shoulders, a mad and merry smile upon his lips. Then the memory was gone, and the man with it.

‘I think that Phoros stayed, that he tried to get Goar from the ground,’ said Tamura. And they would not look at each other then. For they had all ridden past, and none of them had found the courage to stop.

‘If they are not here now,’ said Kai, ‘then they never will be. They go to the gods, and bravely, as friends. We shall see them soon enough.’

‘Ware, behind!’

At once the three of them were in a line, ready for the charge, as the undergrowth tore open and a shadow came from the trees.

A single rider – no, a single horse, its saddle bloody and empty, the horse itself snorting and dancing about. But seeing its companions there, it gave nearly a human cry of relief. For it was only in the worst of times that the horses almost seemed to find a human voice. It came close – still wary of them, but close enough for them to see the pattern of its coat and the markings on the war gear.

‘It is Phoros’s horse,’ Saratos said. ‘They are all gone, then.’